Snapchat is one of the most popular social media apps being used today with 150 million daily active users worldwide. One of the main problems for the app was that it wasn’t making much revenue. Then they mastered advertising with the creation of their discover feature and this brought about a whole new world of advertising that challenges marketers and makes it worthwhile for costumers as the advertisements must be very entertaining. I really think this has brought a whole new form of digital advertising.

With Snapchat users not only have the choice to leave an advert if they are not entertained but they also the choice to enter the advert in the first place.

The reason why this is so important is that viewers are in the driving seat. They decide to turn on the ad and more importantly they can decide to switch it off if it does not provide what they want or entertain them. Digital Marketers must be very creative.Under Armour had a very creative game for Snapchat. It starred NFL player Cam Newton and had users playing as the NFL star instead of watching. With this Under Armour are showing the power of footwork and the power of the products they create around them. When you have finished playing the game, you are able to take a snap of your score and send that to your friends. This to me is brilliant and when your friends see your score they can click on the snap and launch the game themselves

20th Century Fox were the first to avail of Snapchat’s lens “takeover” they bought Snapchat’s lenses line up for the day of May 23 2016. With this Users could apply the pictures and videos of their favourite X-Men characters to their Snaps. For me this is truly the way to go for a brand or firm to make people aware of their product or service.

Another reason why Snapchat is so relevant is that a brand can get real one on one engagement. For other social media networks, it’s almost impossible to do this. But Snapchat enables you to send content directly to your individual followers. As long as they are following you, you as a business have the power to send messages directly to them.

You can send them whatever you think works, and if it goes down well you can build a deeply personal relationship with someone. It can turn them into a loyal customer faster than ever before. For example if you have a loyal follower who has made regular purchases from you, you may decide to send them a personalized video thanking them for their support.

Also with Snapchat its possible to give people what they want which is behind the scenes access, subscribers/followers can be sent behind the scenes footage of a new product/ clothing range or service and when it will launch instead of just an e-mail or Facebook/ Twitter post informing people of the new product.

Asos Dicount Code Snap

The bottom line

If you are creative and use this powerful tool correctly, you have the ability to walk away with a very low cost advert or campaign that can be seen by millions in your core audience.

Snapchat Discover is going to keep creating win-win-win situations for users, brands, and media channels. Snapchat users get a non-invasive ad product (if you don’t like it, swipe right!) that leaves the social of Snapchat untouched; brands get a new and exciting rich ad format; and media channels get to own a piece of the platform and strike advertising deals directly with brands.

I certainly think Snapchat Discover won’t just be a place to see new stories, but also a dynamic platform on which brands can discover their advertising potential.

There are many different things to consider in digital marketing. A well put together digital marketing strategy is like a well-oiled system that generates revenue for a business. And the fuel for this system is traffic with the two types of traffic being organic (free) or paid.

Of course people use the internet for content. This content can be information (education, news, updates etc.) or entertainment (music, movies etc.). If there is no content on the internet, then there is no web traffic generated in the first place. But a carefully crafted digital marketing campaign, that’s well-researched and nicely-designed, may not bring in all the leads. Why? Not because of content issues but because of a traffic problem.

Understanding your website’s traffic is an important step for the best results. When updating content, you must remember who the audience will be and which offers will entice them. Often, websites see traffic from both paid and organic search. With both of these sources playing a major role in overall website traffic, we must fully grasp each one.

Organic search results are what marketers strive to increase. These are the Web page listings that most closely match the user’s search query based on relevance. Also called “natural” search results, listing high in the organic results is what SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is all about.

Paid results are pretty much advertisements — the Web site owners have paid to have their Web pages display for certain keywords, so their Web page shows up when someone runs a search query containing those keywords. Paid traffic strategies include native advertising, pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns, retargeting ads, social media sites or email list sharing.

Social media and paid ads tend to be traffic generators, but they are not long-term customer creators. The issue with paying for referral, whether it’s through Google, Facebook, or any other website is that the traffic only lasts as long as you are paying. Pull your money, and your traffic stops. When you’re paying for your traffic, it is like renting. You get immediate results, but there is no long-term connection from most of the visitors you get this way. So I feel, paid ads are offering the user a reason to come visit, but not necessarily a reason to come back.

In the short term however PPC for example offers a quick fix to get your brand appearing right at the top of the search results straightaway. When done right, PPC increases your conversions with minimum spend, and can have a huge impact on the quality of your traffic, and how much business your website generates.

With Organic traffic the users mind set is different. They are looking for you, or at least what you sell/offer. When they find you, if you provided an excellent experience, they often come back. If you are an unknown brand, repetitive appearances across results can start to increase brand recognition and brand loyalty. A Webpage may be found consistently, and once found; costumers are more likely to stay. Organic users are your best long-term customers, and they are more likely to return. However it takes time building organic results and creating quality content.

In the long-run, SEO provides a great return, as maintaining a first-page ranking can help to generate clicks and brand awareness.

SEO (Organic) + PPC (Paid)

Diversification is key in my opinion, with SEO and PPC; you can build an instant presence at the top of the search results, while you build your organic listings in the background. Also you can use SEO in your PPC campaigns. Overall, if you are serious about generating extra business online, investing in both SEO and PPC helps to reach your short term and long term business goals.

Shifts in marketing settings are nothing new. Internet marketing, when it was first introduced, brought about huge changes in the way brands interact and engage with their
customers. It forced marketers to redefine their communication strategies. Mobiles and tablets did it again with the growth in traffic to websites coming from these devices. Now that wearable technology is well and truly on the cards, these devices are all set to change the current marketing atmosphere once again. And given the fact that today’s consumers are extremely tech savvy, I feel the effect of wearable’s on digital marketing will have even larger implications on the digital marketing landscape.

But, what does this outbreak of new smaller technology mean for online companies? Will it affect web traffic, engagement or click-through rates? And how can anyone make the most of this boom in technology? It may not seem that people will purchase a product on their wearables, but there is a lot more to this technology. It can play a big role in the overall customer journey, so it would be wise to consider the market and having a wearable strategy could make a big difference.

Wearable devices can help marketers to collect large amount of data and analytics which is extremely valuable for their marketing efforts. For example, marketers can use an Apple Watch or other Smartwatch to collect data about its user including his/her real-time location and activities to deliver more personalized messages like more specific regional search results and emails.

Marketers can then utilize these smart devices to collect information related to the wearers’ preferences and buying habits to make even more customized marketing messages. Based on this data and statistics, brands can create apps, shopping carts and scannable QR codes to improve their digital marketing presence.

Wearable devices also have a huge impact on online advertising. Ads on these smart devices are likely to be more geo-specific and targeted, thanks to the availability of so much new data. With wearable devices it is now possible for a brand to send a discount coupon or a special offer code as a customer walks past their store, which is unbelievable to think about and means marketers can actually monetize wearable devices.

Hyper-Targeted Adverts

In digital marketing the secret is to deliver the right message at the right time and right place. With wearables you could receive a push notification about a special discount on a new protein product that the supermarket you are walking by has in stock.
And you are receiving this ad because of a fitness app installed in your smartwatch. This means it was an integrated exposure. The ad has targeted the right person, at the right time at right place.

All these indicate that we are quickly heading to the time when wearable devices can actually measure people’s exposure to mass media and share meaningful data with marketers. In turn, it will provide content which is not only highly relevant but also highly targeted and personalized, making the experience fluid.

What this means

For digital marketers, it is essential to stay up to date with wearable technologies as they are indeed the future of digital marketing. Although it is impossible to predict the exact impact of these wearable devices, you cannot deny the fact that businesses and consumers are fast adopting these technologies. And we will see some permanent changes especially in areas like online advertising, app development and social media in the coming months.

So brands should adapt to this digital marketing technology and reform their digital marketing strategies accordingly. If not it will only make it unlikely for them to survive in this highly changing technological tornado.

This is a recent digital campaign from Lipton Ice Tea India which I came across and enjoyed thoroughly. With chilled ice tea recipes, pranks, tricks and more forming a majority of the visuals, gifs and videos shared on the brand’s social media platforms, this summer.

They embraced the season of summer in their campaign under #100DaysOfSummer. Being the first brand to launch a campaign with the theme of summer for the whole season within the digital sphere, Lipton established itself as the ultimate therapy for heat.

#100DaysOfSummer was clearly massive on content. Lipton Ice Tea crafted an interesting content strategy to impress us digital users. Teaming up with a comedian called Jose, a magician called Neel and a recipe maker called Shailarna has ensured an interesting and relevant mix of visuals, gifs and videos and fun activities while staying true to their ‘refreshing’ proposition. Their social media channels contained a creative feed of short brand stories that still stuck to the summer theme.

Beverage for thought

The social angle of refreshing traffic cops in one of the Worlds most congested cities with chilled Ice Tea ensured the brand had won over digital audiences.

The video filmed traffic police conducting their duties with the load constant noise of horns without complaining. The video explains how 6250 traffic cops battle the traffic and heat against 15,000,000 vehicles in the capital city through the brutal temperature of 40 degrees.

As one of the traffic cops explains “Everyone feels the heat, but it’s our duty so it has to be done”. The offering of a cool refreshing Lipton ice tea puts a smile on the faces of the hard-working traffic police in New Delhi and NCR. The video then ends with the statement “THIS SUMMER REFRESH SMILES WITH LIPTON ICE TEA”.

This video on YouTube has nearly 2 million views with a lot of positive responses and comments from people who really like the video and a majority of thumbs up.

But the other videos have a very low amount of views on YouTube which is most likely down to them not being spread as much as the main video. But what’s surprising to me is that the videos and have more dislikes the likes. This could be due to Lipton doing too much and having too much content and videos.

Core message

Lipton introduced something different by dragging a campaign under one hashtag for an entire season, compared to putting a campaign out in parts. This aided the campaign to stand apart and create a firm hold on their audience thus making Lipton Ice Tea a well-known and popular beverage within social media.

Also with this campaign the brand showcased its sensitivity and responsibility towards society by not only spreading a good message but performing it themselves. Lipton Ice Tea’s #100DaysOfSummer indeed resulted in a strong brand message over the summer, as well as impressing social media savvy generation who do not tend to buy into ads!